December 2007 Newsletter

Greetings,

We have been busy this fall and wanted to give you a quick update and send best wishes for the holidays.

We attended the Western Arts Alliance Conference in Los Angeles in August and were able to meet with several presenters and colleagues over the three days. Joan Cumming, who is affiliated with TFO, hosted a workshop on new media marketing which included Pete Deutschman of The Buddy Group, Tanya Grubich and Lesley-Anne Stone of The Marketing Group. It was a lively discussion of search engine marketing, print versus on line advertising (you can't give up one for the other!), optimum email blasting techniques, along with tips on how to build audiences. In between sessions, we caught up with old friends and colleagues.

In October, Mary Kelley attended the last of three Executive Leadership sessions for Massachusetts cultural leaders organized by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Hauser Center for Non-Profit Management. Since Kelley had a role in designing this new Harvard program, it was especially meaningful to be there for the final three day module. The faculty, including Marshall Ganz, Elizabeth Keating, Chris Letts and Mark Moore, was excellent. The benefits of the program were best articulated by the 40 participants who felt it had changed their organizations in very positive ways. This pilot project for Harvard was subsidized by Massachusetts funders and the Wallace Foundation's START program.

Later in October, Kelley attended the Grantmakers in the Arts conference in Taos, New Mexico. Some 300 foundation and state/regional arts agency representatives attended. Kelley was there in her role as board member of the New England Foundation for Arts and was able to talk with attendees about the new program initiatives of NEFA (www.nefa.org) as well as hear the concerns of national funders about the growth of arts organizations across the country in a time of dwindling resources. Often cited was the study in California done by AES Consulting for the Irvine Foundation (www.irvine.org/publications). While we at TFO are firm believers that arts and cultural organizations with strong vision, diversified income sources, and solid management can be self sustaining, there is no doubt that today's challenging environment requires creative thinking more than ever before.

Current clients of The Field Organization include the Wallis Annenberg Performing Arts Center in Beverly Hills (organization development and executive search services) and The Newport Center for the Performing Arts in Rhode Island (business planning). If we can be of help to you, please let us know. Our website is www.fieldorg.com and we do travel. Look for periodic updates on our website after January.

Best wishes for the holidays and for 2008!

All of us at the Field Organization